2014 Big 50

James Roland

Window World of Baton Rouge,
Baton Rouge,
LA

For a guy with a window
replacement empire, Jim Roland is remarkably low-key. His company is called
Window World of Baton Rouge, but it includes branch operations in New Orleans,
Dallas, Houston, and Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fla. Before he joined Window World
in 2002, Roland ran Magnetite, a company that made and sold magnet-attached
storm windows and operated multiple branch offices across the Midwest and
South.

What drew Roland to Window
World, he says, was the idea of going into the house with an itemized menu of
products and options from which homeowners can select. “They had a good, basic
model for me to follow, with the idea of selling off a sheet with the prices
printed on it,” Roland says.

It didn’t take him long to
thrive in the new environment. By 2005, the Baton Rouge company was Window
World’s second biggest dealer. “At that point I’d been in the business for
20-some years,” Roland says. “I knew how to motivate and manage salesmen,
develop pro forma, and commission plans. I had a knowledge and awareness of how
to control costs, which is a fundamental part of the Window World model.”

Roland quickly used the
knowledge of management disciplines he’d gained over the years to create the
systems and controls necessary to build a multi-office organization within
Window World. Then Hurricane Katrina hit.

Within three months,
Katrina took Window World of Baton Rouge sales from around 2,000 units per month
to 11,000 units. It also created highly stressful conditions for the businesses
involved in rebuilding. For instance, New Orleans suddenly became the tightest
labor market in the country, with hourly rates going up every day. Window World
of Baton Rouge made a commitment to “keep our prices exactly the same,” Roland
says.

To do that, the company
took out ads in Rust Belt towns such as Detroit and Indianapolis to recruit
crews. For three months, Roland says, “I spent three hours every evening
returning phone calls and recruiting installers.” Roland made two other
decisions that proved crucial: He moved into a facility that was 10 times
larger; and—“flush with cash”—he poured it all back into advertising,
transforming Window World into a brand in southern Louisiana.

Takeaways

“We look at a body of reports every single day,” Roland
says, and they’re not just historical. “We’re keen on designing reports that
help managers make decisions and help them understand what’s going on.”

Salespeople don’t get their checks until Window World
gets paid. Installers—all in uniforms, all EPA RRP (Renovation, Repair and
Painting rule)-certified—don’t get theirs until they’ve walked the job with the
customer and the customer has signed off on the paperwork. If a job comes in
incomplete, there’s no payment. When the job’s complete, it gets reviewed by a
field supervisor and salespeople get paid in the next payroll period.

One of the organization’s ongoing goals is to reduce the
amount of time between placing the order and completing installation.